2 suspects brutally beat, strip, Redding California homeless man, ‘Let’s burn him.’

Jeffrey Lee Fecht, 19 and Brandon Eudean Sposito, 26, shown in Shasta County Superior Court.

"2 suspects brutally beat, strip, homeless man ‘Let’s burn him.’"
Duo sentenced for their role in 'deplorable' beating of homeless man
• By Jim Schultz
Record Searchlight
•Posted August 27, 2013 at 4:18 p.m.

"Two Redding men who saw their negotiated plea bargains fall through earlier this month in connection with the near fatal beating of a homeless man were both sentenced Monday to 10 years in prison under a new pact.

Jeffrey Lee Fecht, 19, and Brandon Eudean Sposito, 26, were sentenced after Superior Court Judge Dan Flynn had rejected on Aug. 7 plea bargains that called for only six-year sentences.

Shasta County Deputy District Attorney Toby Powell said today that Flynn accepted the 10-year sentences for both men.

“I think 10 years was the right resolution,” he said, adding that both men pleaded out to attempted murder charges. Fecht also admitted to a separate and unrelated misdemeanor sexual battery charge upon a homeless woman, Powell said.

Fecht and Sposito were both arrested in June and charged with attempted murder and other crimes in connection with the vicious beating of Christopher S. Avery, 48.

Avery was found badly beaten and unconscious early on June 24 behind a building across Cypress Avenue from Redding City Hall.

Powell, who said Fecht and Sposito will be eligible for parole after they complete 85 percent of their sentences, called the savage attack upon Avery “deplorable.”

“It makes your stomach curl,” he said.

A 13-year-old boy also arrested in the attack told investigators Avery was kicked, punched and head-butted before being stripped naked and left for dead, according to a police report filed in Superior Court.

That report says officers later found Sposito near the Redding Library after identifying him from surveillance video from the Safeway store on Pine Street.

The 13-year-old told police that Sposito and Fecht repeatedly punched, kicked and head-butted Avery, even after he was on the ground and eventually they threw his badly beaten body into a nearby trash bin.

“(The boy) told me Sposito used a large boulder to try and break the victim’s knees by dropping it on the victim,” RPD investigator Will Williams wrote in a separate police report. “(The boy) told me after the victim was beaten, the suspects took the victim’s clothes off and then said, ‘Let’s burn him.’”

Powell said he did not know whether the teen is still being prosecuted in Juvenile Court for his role in the crime.

Meanwhile, Avery is continuing to recover from his serious injuries and was set to leave a Redding rehabilitation hospital on Tuesday to stay with relatives in northern Idaho.

Avery’s sister, Laura Woods, said in a telephone conversation today that Fecht and Sposito deserved prison time.

“We’re glad that they got what they got,” she said, describing them as “pure animals.”
Woods said her brother is recovering from his injuries and is doing well.

“They broke his body, but they didn’t break his spirit,” she said,